Stiff Joints

Stiff Joints is a blues-folk-rock band based in South-West London. For the past 15 years or more the band has been a familiar part of the south-west music scene playing local venues in Barnes (The Bull’s Head and the Halfway House), Sheen (Hare & Hounds and the Home Guard), Mortlake, Richmond, Brentford (Brentford FC and the Watermans Arts Centre) as well as performing at birthdays, weddings, funerals, and charity gigs – including a yearly all-day spot for Leukaemia Research’s London Bikeathon (on Ham Common). The band does venture further field and in recent years have played several gigs in London’s West End (Callaghans in Piccadilly), in the West Country (headlining the Hatherleigh Festival in Devon in 2005), and in the south of France (Languedoc).Main singer, songwriter, and band-leader Brian Coope was active on the folk scene in the 1960s, mainly in the Midlands and was one of the main organisers of the Birmingham University Folk Club in the 1965-68 period. Moved to London in 1970 and was a founding member of the JG Blues Band, playing pubs all over South London (with highlights including residencies at the Half Moon and Jolly Gardeners in Putney and acoustic appearances at Les Cousins). In the 1980s formed Bloody Murder (with Brentford Dick, Beau O’Rouke, et al) and the Mad Cow Blues Band (with Mel & Reg Phillips) before linking up with Brentford Dick again (and Jon Riley) to set up Stiff Joints in the early 1990s.